Despite the decline, LG and HP were the only vendors to experience a drop in shipments of nine per cent and 5.8 per cent respectively between 2013 and 2014.

Plus, 1.3 per cent more units were shipped than expected.

Dell, Samsung and Lenovo all saw an increase in shipments driven by consumer sales in the holiday season, reports IDC.

Dell sat in first place amongst the top five vendors globally, shipping five million units and claiming a 15.2 per cent market share.

Samsung were the second most popular company for monitors according to the IDC, with a market share of 12.7 per cent, hitting 4.3 million units shipped.

Lenovo also saw an increase in market share from 10.1 per cent to 10.9 per cent, however remained behind HP, which (although experiencing a 5.8 per cent decline) shipped over four million compared to Lenovo’s 3.6 million units.

LG sit at fifth with a nine per cent decline in shipments year over year, dropping from 3.4 million to 3.1 million units.

Phuong Hang, director of worldwide trackers at IDC, said: “For consumer-oriented vendors like Samsung and LG the holiday season helped fuel the sector. Shipments were also bolstered by high volumes of renewals for devices still running Windows XP in both the public and private sectors.

“Geographically, Western Europe, the second largest regional market in terms of units shipped, experienced year-over-year gain for the fourth consecutive quarter, recording 8.4 per cent growth in the last quarter of 2014,"

Going forward, IDC forecasts a Q1 of 2015 year-on-year decline of 10.4 per cent in worldwide shipments, down to 30.3 million units.